


i loathed you first

by ivyrobinson



Category: Anastasia (1997), Anastasia - Flaherty/Ahrens/McNally
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, loathing to loving, princess diaries 2 au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-02
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2019-10-21 05:49:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17637107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyrobinson/pseuds/ivyrobinson
Summary: the princess diaries 2 au we never knew we wanted.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> as with all aus a bit has been changed and there's a bit of exposition here in this prologue but a few key points: it's set in modern times so the russian revolution happens way later than it did in real life. also for purposes of this fic she was three when the romanovs were murdered, and her mother was pregnant with alexei. Shout out to this [post](http://lettersiarrange.tumblr.com/post/145544926063/reasons-why-the-princess-diaries-2-is-actually-the) for inspiring me to write this [post](http://chrhorowitz.tumblr.com/post/182488923566/okay-but-think-about-a-princess-diaries-2-dimya-au) and eventually this fic.

Anya Malevsky-Malevitch knew she was adopted. Her adoptive mother, Lily, had been upfront about that fact with her, and everyone they encountered, for so long as Anya could remember. It wasn’t her being cruel or trying to not claim her, she knew, it was just that Lily really didn’t like anyone thinking she could be old enough to be Anya’s mother. (Though, she technically was old enough.) The story went as such: when Lily had been 21 and newly widowed, she had come across a toddler Anya all alone. She said enough Russian babies had suffered after the revolution, and after all she had lost- land and people, she couldn’t help but find a kinship with this tiny orphaned Russian doll. She wasn’t very maternal but she cared and was a lot of fun. 

She hadn’t thought much of her birth parents, or family, throughout the years, fifteen years earlier there had been a terrible uprising and people- including the royal family- had been slaughtered, beaten or starved. Whatever fate had awaited her parents, yet seemed to spare her, was not one to dwell on. So instead, she enjoyed her life in Paris with Lily. 

Lily was sophisticated, worldly, and always the center of attention. It drove her nuts that Anya forever seemed to fall on the tomboy side of things, kicking up dirt and playing pranks with their neighbors- the Zborovskys. The daughter, Katya, was Anya’s best friend, and the son, Viktor was Anya’s...friend. (And crush though she, at eighteen, still refused to admit that. Things had been somewhat progressing lately, and she wasn’t going to jinx it by admitting anything.) When she wasn’t out causing mischief, her nose was in a book, allowing herself to transport to all sorts of other worlds and inhabit other sorts of people. Her adoptive mother always pointed out she could just go out and live those adventures instead, but Anya never saw the fun in that- in books she could be anything- in real life she just felt stilted and awkward. 

So on her eighteenth birthday, she wasn’t thinking much of what her life had or could have been, when Lily dropped a rather large bombshell. 

“Your grandmother is coming to visit you,” Lily said it casually, as Anya dug her spoon into a bowl of cereal and milk.

Anya frowned, trying to recall if she had ever met any of Lily’s actual family. Just legions of Russian ex-pat friends in her social circle was all Anya could recall. “Your mother?” 

“No,” Lily sighed, as though she needed to brace herself. And, perhaps, she did. “Your grandmother. Your biological, paternal grandmother.” 

“What?” Milk dribbled down her chin, as she spit out some of the Honey Nut Cheerios she had just put in her mouth. As far as Anya had known, and perhaps she should have asked more questions growing up, she had been some random orphan that Lily had come across. “I have family? How do you know I have family?”

Instead of answering her at first, Lily had heaved another sigh- this time at Anya’s lack of eloquence in not keeping her breakfast in her mouth before speaking, and handed her a paper towel. 

“Look, Anya, there’s something I need to tell you,” Lily began gently, sitting down in the seat next to her. “Something I’ve been dreading telling you during our time together these past fifteen years.”

Oh god, was this bad? Were her parents terrible people? Was her grandmother a demon? Well, then again, while Lily wasn’t the most maternal, Anya didn’t doubt that she’d allow a demon into her life.

Was it good?

Anya gasped, “Am I wizard?”

Lily waved off her question, which to be fair was one she had been asking since she was eleven. “Darling, please.” Anya nodded, somberly, and waited. “Our meeting may not have been as random as I’ve painted over the years.” 

She had started to figure that out already, based on this conversation. Anya asked in a quiet voice, “Did you know my parents?”

Lily bit her lip, and Anya knew whatever it was had to be extremely serious because lip biting was a terrible habit she had been trying to break Anya of for years.”Very well.” She paused, seemingly trying to find the right words to say. “There was a lot of blood shed during the revolution, as you well know.” 

The neighborhood in Paris in which she had grown up was filled with Russian ex-pats. Little Russia the rest of the city called them unofficially. No one seemed to leave the five blocks they inhabited. Anya couldn’t tell you what a true French experience was (not even of the kissing kind), nor could she tell you what a true Russian one was. However, the neighborhood tried and the history of the White Russians were well taught in her school. 

After the slaughter of the royal family, the Romanovs, the Bolsheviks had taken over. The Tsar, his wife who was pregnant at the time, and their four daughters. Destroying the beautiful history of the country, forcing the rich and poor alike to share limited space. Destroying everything it meant to be a Russian. Or so it had been told to her by the people they had forced out of the new country. 

The only remaining royal was the dowager Empress of Russia. Now the reigning monarch of her own small country, just west of Finland that she had come into. She called it Nikolovia, after the son she had lost. It was originally filled with the Russian ex-pats who hadn’t fled to Paris, but over the past ten years had started coming into its own. 

It was a constant thorn in the side of the Bolsheviks, but it was theorized they had reached the limit of other countries’ silence when they had murdered the royal family, and going after the dowager Empress may create an entire World War. Plus, it wasn’t as though she had any heirs that could take over. She was old, they said, and Finland and Russia could fight over the land once she had passed. 

“I don’t know if I want to hear this,” Anya said, starting to get up, but Lily put a gentle hand on her to sit her back down. As she said, the fate of her parents was most likely not a kind one, and even considering any details had always made her stomach turn and sick with anxiety. 

“I’m sorry, darling, but it’s a story you have to hear. It’s very important that you hear,” Lily said. “You see, it’s a story you already know.”

Every world closer to explanation, seemed to confuse Anya what. She wasn’t certain if it was because she just didn’t understand or if Lily was just having that much difficulty explaining whatever it was she was trying to explain.

“Excuse me?”

“You see, your family was killed during the revolution,” she said. Which, again, was not exactly new news to Anya, “And your grandmother brought you to me for protection. She would’ve taken you with her but it would’ve put you in too much danger. She asked me to take you on as my own, something I feel like I’ve really done over the past fifteen years.” Anya nodded in agreement automatically. “To keep you safe until you reached the age of eighteen. And I think you’re old enough to hear this now, even though no age may be a right age to hear this.”

“You’re really freaking me out,” Anya stated. Her cereal was now completely soggy and forgotten, and her birthday now the furthest thing from her mind. 

Lily got up, went over and poured herself a (small) drink, and gulped it down in one shot before returning. “Your grandmother is Marie Feodorovna.”

Wait, why did that sound so very familiar? 

“Your parents were Nicholas and Alix Romanov,” Lily continued on. “You are the fourth daughter, and only surviving child, Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova. The lost princess of Russia and only heir to Nikolovia.” 

Anya shot up to her feet, jolting her cereal and splashing milk all over her allegedly royal body, “I’m _what_?”

And then she never received the answer to that because the world turned to black and she fell to the floor in a dead faint. 

This had not been the eighteenth birthday she had been expecting at all.


	2. Chapter 1

_Approximately Five Years Later_

Anya had never quite gotten the hang of being Anastasia. The Romanovs loomed like giant ghosts over her head for most of her life. A distanced piece of history, and she had never been able to rectify that with the reality of her life. She had taken a gap year before university, spent most of it with her grandmother. Nana wasn’t quite ready to let more than a few people know about her survival. The Bolsheviks’ had a long reach, and she wanted to make sure they were strong enough to sustain when they presented Anya as the heir. 

Then she had gone to university, where the history of the Romanovs had come up, and now everytime they were mentioned she felt a crushing weight on her chest and she couldn’t breathe. But now she was free from that. A college graduate, and look a career already lined up. 

Her life continued to reshape itself into something foreign. Her burgeoning romance with Viktor had started and ended in the span of a heartbeat, or at least that’s what it felt like, they decided they were better off as friends, but she knew the truth. Once it was revealed she was royalty (or had been or would be), things had grown awkward and he had gotten distant. Fortunately the same was not true of her friendship with Katya, who continuously found amusement and awe in Anya’s secret identity as a real life princess. She wouldn’t arrive to Nikolovia for weeks however. 

Her Nana had decided it was time to bring back Anastasia from the dead for good this time. No more rumors, no more secrets. A grand announcement of her existence and naming her the heir to the new crown.

She felt anxious about it, guts all twisted up inside. She had rather enjoyed the simplicity of just getting to know her grandmother, a blood tie to her she never thought she’d every meet. 

“Everything will work out the way it should,” Lily had told her when she had gone to her with any concerns. Lily, however, was just another cog in the machine. 

“It’s going to be weird,” she whined to Katya one night on the phone. “I grew up thinking I had all this freedom, and now I just feel all these ropes around me.” 

“Poor little princess,” Katya had teased. “You’re going to be in charge, you make the rules.” 

“I’m afraid that Nana is going to secure them tight before she releases any hold on that crown,” Anya confessed, though she hated saying it. It’s not that she thought her grandmother nefarious, just detail oriented. She had a vision of Anya’s future. 

Her friend had laughed, “Then take what liberties you can now. See a moment or an opportunity and seize it! That’s what Anya Malevsky-Malevitch would do, and I see no reason why Anastasia Romanova wouldn’t do that as well.” 

Now she thought of that conversation whenever she felt overwhelmed or suffocated. 

She hadn’t been much of a worrier until these past few years. Nor had she been one much for deportment, etiquette or heels and now all three were natural to her. Sometimes she’d pass her reflection in the mirror and see herself slipping away from it, leaving nothing but a stranger. 

Her current sense of anxiety, however, was not coming from the upcoming announcement- though thinking of that longer than a second could trigger that (once she was named future Queen, she’d be that for life- but would they even believe or accept her as Anastasia Romanova?), but rather her grandmother’s pronouncement the night before about all the potential suitors she would meet.

Their families, their pros, their cons, and how she could meet them. Her twenty third birthday was in a month, and there was going to be a celebration for that, and what a wonderful opportunity that would be for her to meet these young men who could one day be her consort. 

The next boy and possibly last boy she’d ever kissed would be dictated by her grandmother and her advisors. Sometimes she wished being a part of a family didn’t come with so much extra (and royal) baggage. 

She had barely kissed any boys, just Viktor and then in university she hadn’t kissed any because she didn’t know how to handle the whole by the way I’m secretly a murdered princess conversation that may come up in the future. And classes did take up a lot of her time. 

Whilst lost in her thoughts, she felt a sudden jolt as she hit something, and then two hands on her shoulders, steadying her and preventing her from stumbling back. 

“Sorry,” she breathed, and then made the mistake of looking up. A mistake because when Anastasia felt trapped, Anya definitely came out and Anya was reckless and reactionary. And she was looking up at the faces of one of the most handsome men she’d ever come across. And then he smiled in response and dimples appeared, “Can you do me a favor?”

He looked slightly confused but didn’t stop smiling, “Sure?” 

Anya placed her hands against his cheeks, lifted herself up onto her toes, and planted a kiss against his lips. A warm bolt surged through her, seeming to restart her heart and send it into overdrive. 

She took a breath and released him, “Thank you.” 

He blinked rapidly in response, “Um...you’re welcome?” 

She flashed him a smile in response, and then ran back towards the rooms where she was staying. 

She could do this. She was Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova, and she had been born for this. 

-

Once Anya had gotten home, she had shed herself from the clothes she had been wearing, showered and came back out as a renewed person. No matter the struggle, it was worth it for the family she had discovered and these people who continued to need refuge from what Russia had become. She had gotten dressed for dinner and went downstairs, only to see her grandmother didn’t have the same new lease on life Anya had found. 

Then again, her grandmother probably didn’t walk around and kiss total strangers. Or if she did, it wasn’t a side of her that Anya had seen. 

“Anastasia,” she greeted her. It was a name she used to try to get her grandmother to shorten to Anya, but her Nana would not have any of it. “Change of plans.” 

Anya’s eyebrows raised at that. Marie Feodorovna did not change plans, plans changed themselves to fit her schedule. “A change?” 

"Close your mouth,” her grandmother sighed. “Count Leopold,” this name of her relative was said with unrestrained disgust. “Is having a televised announcement. Short notice, so we won’t make it there in time so we have to watch it.” 

It’s not like he could announce he had found the lost heir to the Romanovs, so she wasn’t certain how this affected her. Unless, “Do you think he found out about me?”

Her grandmother looked over at her, and then up and down, “No, he’s not that smart.” 

Anya wanted to smile at that but didn’t seem like a wise moment to do so, instead she followed her grandmother into a large room that already had the television playing. The count looked vaguely familiar, probably from the family history that Marie had gone over with her multiple times. 

“---irresponsible of her,” he was saying, and she caught her grandmother rolling her eyes.

“What is he talking about?” She whispered, but Marie held up a hand in response. 

“The people….” Leopold continued on, and Anya studied the screen. There were two men behind him, just out of focus. “...We need to secure our tenuous hold on this land, and so I present to you a nomination for the next ruler of Nikolovia. Someone from and for the people of our land, since Marie Fedorova does not seem fit to give us one after all these years.” He gestured to one of the men behind him, and he stepped up. “I present, Dmitry Sudayev.” 

Anya gasped in response, and her grandmother clutched her arm in response. However, Anya wasn’t gasping at the announcement- though she definitely should be, but rather because she had kissed the man who was now trying to take the throne from her.


End file.
